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ANTIQUES; They Never Left Home Without 'Em

In the mid-19th century, peace, prosperity and the development of railway and steamship networks made foreign travel commonplace for middle-class Europeans and Americans. Because these new tourists ostensibly sought self-improvement as well as pleasure, they invariably had at hand the relevant title published by one of the three Leviathans of guidebook publishing: the German firm of Baedeker (which published guidebooks in German, French and English), John Murray of London and the Guides Joanne from the Parisian publisher Hachette.

The indispensability of these frankly didactic guidebooks is illustrated in E. M. Forster's novel ''A Room With a View'' (1908), in which Baedeker's guide to Northern Italy provides a recurring leitmotif. In Chapter 2, the main character, Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman who is a first-time visitor to Florence, is genuinely panic-stricken when she is caught adrift ''in Santa Croce with no Baedeker.'' (Inspired by the Murray and Baedeker guides, Forster later wrote an excellent, locally published guidebook to Alexandria, Egypt.)

Although many of their details are outdated and many of the places they describe no longer exist (the Papal States of Central Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example), these classic guidebooks still fascinate. So Baedeker's guidebooks, Murray's ''hand-books'' (always hyphenated) and Guides Joanne are avidly collected, used either to provide a historical dimension to one's travels or, more commonly, by armchair travelers. With the shift of the antiquarian book trade to the Internet, 19th- and early 20th-century guidebooks are easy to find through sources like bookfinder.com and

abe.com. And they are not necessarily expensive, with price, as in all antiquarian book-selling, depending on age, scarcity and condition.

While the rare English-language edition of Baedeker's ''Russia'' (1914; facsimile editions 1971) costs well over $1,000 (for copies in very good or better condition), early 20th-century Baedekers for popular destinations like Paris, Switzerland and Italy are as little as $25 on the Internet. Murray's hand-books, generally older and scarcer than most Baedekers, cost much more. The 19th-century Guides Joanne approximate Murray's hand-books in price. Guides Bleus, as the Guides Joanne were called after 1914, are usually inexpensive.

Each of these guidebooks was intended to be a comprehensive description of the country or region, with once helpful, and now merely captivating, introductory information about culture and history, customs and the logistics of travel by ship, train or diligence. The greater portion of each book consists of historical, architectural and artistic information about every point of touristic interest. Finally, because they were meant to provide all the information that the traveler needed, each guidebook provides maps and city plans, sometimes the only ones in existence at the time they were published.

These guidebook series also project characteristics arguably (if unfairly) associated with their countries of origin. Baedeker's guides are meticulously organized, astonishingly thorough and delightfully pedantic. Murray's hand-books, often written by gentleman amateurs, feature obscure antiquarian anecdotes and apposite classical quotations -- in untranslated Greek or Latin. Guides Joanne and Guides Bleus have become an esteemed French national institution, effusively praised by Jacques Chirac in 1991 on their 150th anniversary and minutely deconstructed by the intellectual Roland Barthes in his classic book of essays, ''Mythologies'' (1957).

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The most famous guidebook is undoubtedly Baedeker's ''Russia,'' published in seven editions in German, three in French and one in English. Harrison E. Salisbury, foreign correspondent for The New York Times, wrote that when he was posted to Russia in 1944 to cover the closing years of World War II and traveled throughout the country, ''almost every step of the way my companion was Baedeker's 1914 handbook for Russia,'' his ''most precious asset.''

Despite its indisputable excellence, ''Russia'' is not universally considered the greatest Baedeker. Many aficionados would cite the eighth edition of ''Egypt and the Sudan'' (English edition 1929; facsimile edition 1985). This was the pièce de résistance of Prof. Georg Steindorff of the University of Leipzig, who had written all five editions of Baedeker's ''Egypt'' since 1897. For this last edition he journeyed up and down the Nile with a set of hardbound notebooks holding each page of the preceding edition, faced by a large blank page for revisions.

T. E. Lawrence was a fervent admirer of Baedeker's ''Palestine and Syria,'' which he used on lengthy excursions in 1909 and 1911. During World War I the British War Office prepared an unauthorized reprint, ''based upon the well-known enemy publication Baedeker's 'Palestine and Syria,' '' and issued it to officers in the region. After hostilities ended, the War Office sent two copies to the Baedeker firm and advised that the remainder would be destroyed.

But my favorite guidebook is Murray's ''Hand-Book for Spain'' (first edition 1845; third edition 1855; reprint 1966), an immense and deeply learned work by Richard Ford. Ford (1796-1858) was a wealthy British aristocrat who traveled throughout Spain from 1830 to 1833. In 1839 John Murray asked him to write a book about Spain for Murray's new series of traveler's hand-books. Six years later it was published in two thick volumes of tiny print and sold out immediately. Ford was an ideal guidebook writer. He knew and loved Spain and the Spanish people but was alive to their faults. While early editions of the hand-book remain invaluable for Ford's insights into Spanish culture, history and antiquities, the first and third editions (the two important editions published during his lifetime) have an additional attraction: Ford's prose rivaled that of his distinguished contemporaries Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope.

A final word on maps. They were scanty, sketchy and monochromatic in early editions but steadily increased in detail, accuracy and use of color as leading cartographers in Germany, Britain and France took over their preparation. Because almost all guidebook maps are folded into the books, they are often as fresh today as when they were printed. The maps in Murray's ''Hand-Book for New Zealand'' (1893) are unsurpassed for sheer beauty, those in Baedeker's ''Egypt'' a close second. For quantity the record was probably set by Baedeker's ''Switzerland'' (27th edition 1928), with 81 maps, 30 plans and 15 Alpine panoramas.

Those who stumble into this corner of bibliophily are very likely embarking on a lifelong addiction. As J. G. Links, the British art historian, wrote in his own excellent guidebook, ''Venice for Pleasure'' (first edition 1966), ''some of us would as soon think of going to bed without a couple of pages of Murray or Baedeker as without brushing our teeth.''

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A version of this article appears in print on November 8, 2002, on Page E00040 of the National edition with the headline: ANTIQUES; They Never Left Home Without 'Em. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe